Democracy Reconsidered

Led by the provocative observations of Lawler, a member of President Bushs Council on Bioethics, the first section lays out the predicament caused by the gravitation of democracy towards a disbelief in absolute truth, leading to a crisis of self-evidence. The second section searches for tools that one might use to restore health to the individual and community within American democracy, including spiritual faith, creative autonomy, and philosophic inquiry. The third section addresses the supposed crisis in liberal education caused by our crisis of self-evidence. Included essays explore the extent to which the professed aims of liberal education may be at odds with the cultivation of dutiful citizens. The book closes by considering some of the political consequences of employing content-less freedom as the primary standard by which human behaviour is judged.